Abstract

The Production of Political Representations is a philosophical analysis of the discourse, practices, and effects of representation in political institutions, particularly in American democracy. Its perspective and methodology are derived largely from Foucault, and tempered by a range of contemporary philosophers, including Derrida, Pitkin, and Castoriadis. Beginning with an historical or "archaeological" analysis of three specific formations of political representation from the past , and then focusing on more contemporary, American dynamics , the dissertation explores the traditional notion that what gets "represented" in the apparatuses and processes of representation is a political subject or identity that exists fundamentally independent of and prior to that process. In contrast, it probes the possibility that the mechanisms of representation, which are not isolated from other generative processes in society, produce this political subject at the same time that they produce a representative for it, and it investigates some of the ramifications of such a possibility